How Dental Bonding Can Transform Smiles

Dental bonding is a non-invasive treatment that can be used to transform that the way your teeth look and to rebuild them. The procedure does not require making any alterations to the patient’s teeth, as is the case with restorations like crowns and dentures.

Dental bonding is typically performed during a single dental appointment, but indirect bonding, which involves making the restoration in a lab and cementing it to the patient’s teeth, requires two trips to the dentist.

Transforming smiles with dental bonding

Composite bonding has many uses in dentistry. Issues that this procedure is used to fix include:

• Broken or chipped teeth
• Spaces between teeth
• Stains and discoloration
• Tooth decay
• Deformed teeth

Treatments with composites start with the dentist examining the patient’s teeth and explaining their options to them. Many issues that can be addressed with dental bonding can also be fixed with restorations like crowns and veneers. These restorations tend to provide long-lasting results, but they cost significantly more than composite bonding and involve making permanent alterations to the patient’s teeth by removing enamel. That is a permanent process that leaves the tooth vulnerable, so it will always need a restoration.

Cosmetic bonding

The dentist will educate the patient about their different options before starting with composite bonding. The oral professional will note the color of the patient’s real teeth and select a composite that has the same color. These composites are made out of mixtures of plastics and glass.

The dentist then cleans the tooth being treated and uses an etching solution to roughen its exterior so the composite sticks better to it. The composite is applied to the tooth in layers to create a stronger restoration. The oral professional hardens it with a curing light before polishing the tooth to complete the treatment. The treatment transforms the way that the patient’s smile looks by doing the following:

• Making treated teeth appear whiter: The composites used for the treatment are color-matched with the patient’s real teeth, so treating teeth with composites makes them appear brighter. As a result, the patient ends up with a whiter smile.
• Fixing aesthetic issues: The composites used for dental bonding can be molded like putty, allowing dentists to use it to rebuild teeth and restore their appearance. Issues like deformed, chipped, or broken teeth can easily be restored with dental bonding, transforming the way that the person’s teeth look.
• Closing up unnatural-looking spaces: Composite bonding provides the fastest solution for spaces between teeth. The oral professional uses the composite to increase the width of the two teeth closest to the gap, closing up the space between them.